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| Predecessor | Rising Youth Group |
|---|---|
| Successor | Libertarian League |
| Formation | 1932; 93 years ago (1932) |
| Founders | Louis Slater Sidney Solomon Tommy Dolgoff Albert Weiss[1] |
| Dissolved | 1939; 86 years ago (1939) |
| Purpose | Anarcho-communism[2] |
| Locations | |
| Leader | Mark Schmidt |
Main organ | Vanguard: Journal of Libertarian Communism |
TheVanguard Group was ananarchist political group active during the 1930s, which published the periodicalVanguard: Journal of Libertarian Communism, led bySam Dolgoff (aka Sam Weiner, editor ofVanguard). Vanguard was for a time, during the 1930s, the leading English-language anarchist youth organization inNew York City.[3]
In 1927, theRising Youth Group was founded inNew York by Sara and Elizabeth Goodman, two youngJewish anarchists frustrated with the older generation.[4] By 1929 the group had dissolved and were succeeded by theBronx-based Friends of Freedom, which became the Vanguard Group in 1932.[5] Despite this new group's inheritance of its predecessor's frustration with their elders, the articles published in their periodical still bore a resemblance to those being published byRoad to Freedom and they were themselves inspired by older Jewish anarchist theoreticians such asEmma Goldman andRudolf Rocker.[4]
The group desired to approach anarchism from less theoretical and more concrete terms, dedicated to developing a positive program to display anarchism as a viable force for social change.[1] Ananarcho-communist group, it aimed to construct a nationwide specific anarchist federation that could gain the support of both workers and intellectuals in order to prepare for asocial revolution. It supported aunited front with otherprogressive organizations such as theIndustrial Workers of the World and theSocialist Party. A split in the organization was caused by one of its leading figuresMark Schmidt, who advocated for uniting with theCommunist Party and even supported theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[2] Schmidt's theses was opposed by young members of the organization, particularly byPaul Avrich andAbe Bluestein, the latter of whom broke off from the organization to found theChallenge Group.[6] Schmidt increasingly gravitated towardsStalinism, defending the Soviet Union and even surveilling the remaining group's members, includingSam Dolgoff, who had previously sided with Schmidt.[7] This led to some older anarchists branding the Vanguard Group as "anarcho-Bolsheviks".[8]
The Vanguard Group had dissolved by the time of theUnited States'entry intoWorld War II.[4] Jewish anarchists, including Rudolf Rocker who had himself fledNazi Germany, largely supported theAlliedwar effort out of ananti-fascist conviction.[9] While some members of the Vanguard Group even went as far as to join theUnited States Army to fight in the war, others quit the group due to theiranti-militarist opposition to the war, joining theWhy? Group in 1942.[10]